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'Back to the Future: The Musical' Story and Characters | The Box Seat Babes Podcast · The BSB Podcast

• 0:00
  Welcome back listeners to another exciting episode of the Box Seat Babes podcast.
• 0:04
  In today's episode, we're revving our engines to 88 miles an hour as the electrifying show, Back to the Future, arrives at the Detroit Opera House.
• 0:11
  And for those who have seen the show, we all know it's 1.21 gigawatts to be exact.
• 0:16
  But before we jump into it, please like, follow, and subscribe to us on all major social media platforms to stay up to date on news and reviews from here in Michigan and the
• 0:24
  larger theater community.
• 0:26
  Spoiler warning, we're going to be exploring the storylines and characters from the North American touring production of Back to the Future.
• 0:32
  So if you're looking to go without any spoilers, make like a tree and get out of here.
• 0:35
  However, if you're still here, strap yourselves in to the Delorean, get ready to explore this wacky show.
• 0:43
  I feel like that was one of our best times doing it.
• 0:44
  We got through it in like the second take, so.
• 0:46
  Take a bow.
• 0:50
  joining me as always is my co-pilot in this time-travely, Doctor Who would say wiggly, uh whoa, nope, Doctor Who, nevermind, we're not there tonight.
• 1:01
  Wibbly wobbly timey wimey, there we go, show.
• 1:05
  It's RJ Miller-Zelinko.
• 1:06
  Welcome to The DeLorean, sir.
• 1:08
  We are glad to have you here once again to talk about Back to the Future.
• 1:13
  But the question is, what year is it?
• 1:15
  That's a great question.
• 1:16
  And we're actually going to start with a very simple question, actually a statement.
• 1:20
  Listeners, I need you to know something real quick.
• 1:23
  We constantly talk about like what our relationship with these projects are prior to this.
• 1:29
  And I'm just going to throw RJ under the bus.
• 1:31
  He did not know Back to the Future prior to seeing the show.
• 1:36
  I actually gave him a rundown of all three movies sitting in the car as we were waiting to go in to see the musical.
• 1:42
  RJ.
• 1:43
  How could you have grown up on Jurassic Park?
• 1:46
  On some other classics I know you've mentioned that you've watched with your family and somehow Back to the Future didn't make it on the list.
• 1:54
  No idea.
• 1:55
  mean, my family is not sci-fi at all.
• 1:59
  uh I know Jurassic Park.
• 2:02
  Jurassic Park's just, don't even, it's its own thing.
• 2:07
  It's sciency enough that my parents, who were both science teachers, were like, this is a good idea.
• 2:14
  But.
• 2:15
  to the future.
• 2:15
  Although I don't know if my dad was a fan.
• 2:18
  He could have been and I could just totally be have no idea.
• 2:22
  We never talked about it.
• 2:23
  But um there's there was nothing that drew me to become interested.
• 2:33
  So I just didn't.
• 2:34
  That's super interesting, because I feel like this is such an integral part of pop culture.
• 2:40
  This came out 40 years ago, right around this time actually, we're celebrating the 40th anniversary.
• 2:45
  back to the future, this is a movie I grew up on.
• 2:47
  Robert Zemeckis, who created this franchise along with Bob Gale, these are like cornerstone movie.
• 2:58
  makers.
• 2:58
  Like you want to look at their things like Back to the Future, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Forrest Gump, Romancing the Stone, which I think only my I've seen because my mom liked
• 3:07
  Romancing the Stone.
• 3:08
  I mean, he also directed the satirical black comedy Death Becomes Her, which you know for a fact is one of my favorites, which might be why I'm so into Back to the Future.
• 3:20
  But I feel like somehow somewhere.
• 3:24
  Like, I feel like we failed you in your education of movies here that you have not seen this yet and you are 32 years old.
• 3:30
  Well, to be fair, I have seen none of the movies that you just mentioned.
• 3:35
  Including Death Becomes Her.
• 3:37
  So...
• 3:39
  the phone, first off, you've never seen Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
• 3:43
  No.
• 3:44
  He also was part of the Polar Express?
• 3:48
  You've never seen the- okay.
• 3:51
  Okay, we have one.
• 3:53
  Listeners, we have one movie out of this entire list that we can say RJ has seen.
• 4:00
  But okay, I feel like this is giving us a really good conversation then, other than the fact that I'm just judging you a little bit.
• 4:06
  Because-
• 4:07
  actually 5,000 times for all the other movies that you haven't seen, so we're good.
• 4:13
  happen eventually.
• 4:15
  ah But I think it gives us a good perspective because you're going into Back to the Future with essentially a clear mind, like into the musical, you know, where I had a preconceived
• 4:28
  notion of what was going to happen because I have grown up watching this film repeatedly for years of my life.
• 4:36
  ah So that being said, general impressions.
• 4:42
  of the story of Back to the Future because we're going to dive into it.
• 4:44
  But obviously, you did not know anything until you sat down at the Detroit Opera House.
• 4:49
  Correct, yeah.
• 4:52
  Story.
• 4:55
  What is the story?
• 4:56
  That's a great question, right?
• 4:58
  mean, of course, title gives away so much, right?
• 5:03
  There's clearly time travel happening.
• 5:05
  um Ultimately about a friendship.
• 5:11
  revolving around time travel and how to fix said time travel when things go awry and you make one domino just have a continuous effect on history, ultimately.
• 5:34
  I think what's interesting about the title is that like, back to the future doesn't see, feel like it doesn't feel like it's the right, like when you think about it, it's just
• 5:43
  like, you're going back to the future, but the movie is about going to the past.
• 5:46
  But truthfully, the film is about Marty McFly getting stuck in the past and having him back to the future, which is really kind of like this cool concept.
• 5:53
  I know it's probably paradoxical and people are listening to me and like, what is he talking about?
• 5:57
  He just literally said exactly what the title was.
• 5:59
  But to me growing up, it was always so fascinating because it wasn't like,
• 6:03
  back to the past.
• 6:04
  It wasn't like going to the past.
• 6:05
  was like, the idea is that you went to the past and you're coming back to the future, uh which just seemed so cool as like an eight year old.
• 6:14
  You know what I mean?
• 6:15
  Yeah, it is.
• 6:16
  Well, and that was part of the confusing as someone who hadn't seen it.
• 6:21
  I was like, okay, bad, like, because we don't start that way.
• 6:24
  Right.
• 6:25
  Like we have to have the sense of current now or, you know, the eighties.
• 6:31
  Um, and then go back, which is where we spend most of our time in the show.
• 6:39
  Right.
• 6:40
  But again, as someone who had no idea what was going on, I was like,
• 6:45
  Back to the what?
• 6:48
  un sure.
• 6:49
  So while the book remains true to Bob Gale and Robert Temeckis, uh the story is of Marty from 1985, who is working with Doc Brown, who is uh in Brilliant's mind, who somehow
• 7:05
  figures out how to make a time machine out of a DeLorean, which is like, that's the key piece here.
• 7:10
  That's the cool part.
• 7:12
  And again, we'll talk about the technical aspects in the second one, uh but he goes back.
• 7:17
  gets stuck in the past, 1955, 30 years in the past, where his parents are teenagers, and he has to somehow, like you said, set it right.
• 7:25
  There's a lot going on in the story.
• 7:26
  I didn't realize, I think, when I watched the movie as a kid, how much was going on in the story.
• 7:31
  But when he like, if we look at it three different pieces, so there's the before he goes back, the going back and then the ending.
• 7:39
  What is kind of your impressions comparatively of like the beginning part and then getting to 1955?
• 7:45
  Cause I do have to say, I didn't realize how can like, how quickly that story moves at the beginning to get us to 1955.
• 7:53
  And I was like, it's like a whirlwind and then you're breathing.
• 7:56
  You know what I mean?
• 7:56
  Well, was like just enough introduction.
• 7:58
  Like here are literal people's names and then we're jumping.
• 8:03
  So like, here's, you basically know who's on stage and now you don't, but you do because they look different or they sound, you know, whatever, because it's 30 years prior.
• 8:18
  Um, so yeah, interesting.
• 8:22
  The balance of those time periods was interesting to me.
• 8:26
  I think it's interesting because they do introduce so many people.
• 8:28
  get his dad, George, you get his mom, Lorraine, get Biff, you get all of his siblings, whose siblings don't really factor into most of the story other than the fact that they're
• 8:38
  like a time, like they're like a story element, which we'll talk about in a second.
• 8:42
  uh But you get a jump on all of these characters.
• 8:48
  You get to meet Doc Brown briefly, and then it's Marty going back in time.
• 8:55
  because he's trying to save the doctor and he accidentally hits 88 miles per hour.
• 9:00
  And then all of sudden that's when it's like, okay, you've established all these characters and now we get time to breathe and we're back in the 1950s feel.
• 9:08
  And it's all about kind of trying to make his parents fall in love again because he's messed up the timeline pretty bad.
• 9:15
  So I guess I do want to take a step back and go, how do you like time story, like time traveling stories?
• 9:20
  Because my sister who loves Back to the Future,
• 9:22
  hates time traveling stories because of the paradoxicalness of it, because of how it can mess with things and how if you change the future you never have to go back to the past.
• 9:31
  How do you feel about those like story elements?
• 9:33
  Yeah, so really hadn't thought about it until just now.
• 9:37
  And it could be a very good reason as to why this wasn't my favorite.
• 9:44
  Because I don't think I do.
• 9:46
  think when I think about TV and movies that I've seen that do involve time, I think Marvel couldn't be less interested because it can get so
• 10:00
  nitty gritty confusing where are we if there's not a very clear communication like i'm not the type of person to try to follow like to put specific effort into following because i'm
• 10:18
  too concerned about everything else
• 10:22
  So I think that could be a very good reason as to why this was not my cup of tea.
• 10:27
  I know it's so interesting because as we'll get into by the end of discussion two, so stick around for next week, those who are listening, it does get convoluted.
• 10:38
  And I think that it's interesting about who the show is really for.
• 10:40
  And I think that is a part two discussion because I think part of the story is obviously simplified, but if you don't know the original film, are all the layers there.
• 10:54
  And I think what's interesting about this story is that it is almost a carbon copy of the original film with music.
• 11:02
  And I'm wondering if the music, which we'll talk about in part two, I'm sorry people, I know I keep bringing that up, but like, I think that that really convolutes the story
• 11:10
  quite a bit.
• 11:11
  And you're sometimes you're wondering like, what is going on in Back to the Future the musical because that it takes up a lot of space and there's not a lot of room for the
• 11:21
  actual story.
• 11:22
  Yeah, I definitely think that there were story line pieces.
• 11:25
  And again, this is completely I don't know if they're in the movie or not, but um even the friendship between the two leads.
• 11:34
  ah Like nothing told me that they were close friends.
• 11:40
  Like they just both appeared on stage together and they were like jump in this car or don't jump in this car.
• 11:49
  And then from there,
• 11:51
  Like that was really it before they time travel.
• 11:54
  That's all I saw.
• 11:55
  So I was like, I don't know how long he's known this guy.
• 11:59
  I don't know how, like where they met, what they're doing, what this relationship is.
• 12:05
  Is he a teacher?
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  Is he a mentor?
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  Like there's just a thousand questions that I had.
• 12:10
  And because of adding in these extra pieces musically, which you have to do when it's a musical.
• 12:21
  I feel like maybe some of that got lost.
• 12:24
  Like the appreciation for the friendship and the relationship that the whole thing is basically centered around.
• 12:32
  I didn't get it.
• 12:34
  And for those who haven't seen the show or the movie, you know, or are wondering who he's talking about, R.J.'s been talking about Doc Brown and Marty McFly, which I think there's
• 12:42
  an interesting dynamic there because Doc Brown is a 30-year-older-than-Marty-at-least man who they don't really talk about their relationship.
• 12:53
  They don't really tell you how they've come to be together.
• 12:56
  And that actually does apply to the film as well.
• 13:00
  For anyone that has read the original script or
• 13:03
  has worked on the original movie and would love to reach out to us and let us know.
• 13:07
  uh I found out actually today talking to somebody else that apparently the original script of the movie had reasoning behind how they met.
• 13:16
  And then when one of the studios stepped in, they tried to family fight it a little bit.
• 13:20
  It got rid of.
• 13:21
  So basically the setup of the original script was kind of like a uh Breaking Bad esque storyline where
• 13:28
  Doc Brown is super, super brilliant, but he's a little bit morally gray where he'll just pretty much do anything to get his projects through.
• 13:37
  And as a result, he has Marty selling drugs for him to get money to pay for his machines.
• 13:43
  And that is their dynamic of how they met each other.
• 13:46
  And all of that was also ripped from the film.
• 13:49
  But when you think about it that way, that honestly kind of makes sense with the dynamics that they have set up in this show and in the film.
• 13:56
  With this story though, there are, again, we go back in time, Marty messes up the timeline by accidentally stopping his dad from being a peeping Tom, ah or it doesn't stop him from
• 14:09
  being a peeping Tom, but helps him fall out of a tree.
• 14:12
  But basically he's gonna get written out of time because his dad doesn't fall in love with uh his mom Lorraine.
• 14:20
  Instead, Lorraine kind of falls in love with her son.
• 14:23
  he has to the timeline back before his siblings and himself are erased.
• 14:26
  And so same story that so many people know, it ends with a happy ending.
• 14:30
  um What did you like from the story aspect of it?
• 14:38
  What did I like about the story?
• 14:44
  I just, there's so many.
• 14:48
  It really wasn't.
• 14:49
  I'm so sorry to the listeners who I know people are gonna like condemn me because this is a, it has a cult following, but.
• 14:56
  And maybe once I watch the movies, I'll completely change my tune.
• 14:59
  So maybe we'll do a podcast after that.
• 15:02
  But, um, I mean, it is a very predictable storyline once you get to where you're going.
• 15:10
  like, it just feels like two very different lines that are happening at the same time, right?
• 15:18
  Cause the intentionality.
• 15:20
  of the time travel is one line and then the actual story, which is actually just his parents history is the second plot line to me.
• 15:31
  So really we're just kind of getting a convoluted love story a little bit ah with the importance of like family because obviously then you have the son who like wants to put
• 15:42
  his family back together.
• 15:43
  uh And who there is a slight
• 15:48
  eluding to his dad being a wimp or, you know, just never spineless.
• 15:56
  um And so there's kind of this weird, I'm going to make my dad into a man type situation happening, uh which I think I guess any child might be able to relate to because that you
• 16:13
  want to see your parents.
• 16:15
  and you want to see them succeed and you want to see them be able to stand up for themselves and vice versa really in regards to parents and children.
• 16:26
  So I I appreciated the familial aspect.
• 16:29
  um
• 16:31
  And that was probably the main piece for me.
• 16:36
  What is interesting about that is I have to say, even with the original film, what my favorite part was, was the relationship between Marty and his dad, because when we meet
• 16:45
  Marty at first, he doesn't like that his dad is so weak, and so it's such a pushover.
• 16:49
  ah And he does end up appreciating his dad more and ends up making his dad more so into a person that he can respect, ah which is a different conversation to have altogether about
• 17:02
  does his dad...
• 17:05
  have to earn his respect in that way.
• 17:06
  But like that's part of the storyline is really them.
• 17:08
  And it's actually the most intriguing storyline out of all of them, especially in this show, the musical, because a lot of the other relationships did get really simplified, or
• 17:16
  very um easily digestible, I feel like is a good way to put it like they boil down a lot of characters, I feel like, to make them fit into the story better.
• 17:26
  And but that was one relationship that still had the integrity of the film, if that makes sense.
• 17:32
  I just have one question and maybe I'm jumping ahead about performances
• 17:38
  I'm assuming that there is some kind of plot, not plot line, but like the dad's character and certain mannerisms are so clearly scripted and obvious for that character.
• 17:54
  I'm thinking the laugh.
• 17:57
  I'm thinking some of the walk and the way that he moves.
• 18:01
  uh
• 18:03
  I part of me was waiting for the moment where they explain those.
• 18:07
  And I didn't feel and maybe I just missed it, but I didn't feel like that ever came full circle.
• 18:16
  We saw it happen in the current and previous timeline, but I didn't feel like I got an explanation.
• 18:22
  It was just a quirk and maybe it is just simply a quirk and I'm a well reading over.
• 18:29
  And maybe it was a character choice or an actor choice, but I just, the whole time I was like, when do I get to know why this is a thing?
• 18:37
  And then I never got it.
• 18:39
  I never got it.
• 18:41
  So I'm so glad you brought this up, I'm so glad you brought this up because I did not, I'm looking here, I did not write this in here, but as I was writing our script, our notes, I
• 18:53
  had this thought completely.
• 18:54
  So you are not missing anything other than the fact that they are trying so hard to get the actors to play the actors of the film who played the characters in the movie.
• 19:07
  So I'm gonna break this down just a little bit.
• 19:10
  The guy who plays George was playing Crispin Glover in Back to the Future.
• 19:17
  And Crispin had made specific choices for his character 40 years ago that they were trying to mimic to a T.
• 19:27
  And the other one we saw this in really well was Biff.
• 19:30
  Biff had the same voice, the same mannerisms, the same hairstyle, the same nose shape.
• 19:35
  they found somebody to match the actor.
• 19:39
  to play the role that the actor had played then, which really doesn't give a lot of originality to the show, because it's not like um Mike Bideman, who plays George, that's
• 19:50
  not him in the role playing the role.
• 19:52
  He is playing the actor who played the role 40 years ago, which is a very interesting choice in my opinion.
• 19:57
  Yeah, but I do feel like that is so common with movies that become shows.
• 20:04
  Because people want to see what was, well, and especially like the cult type following, like they want to see a carbon copy or hear a carbon copy of what they've previously
• 20:21
  experienced rather than kind of like original thought.
• 20:28
  for sure, which I can get.
• 20:30
  And like, this is where it's really hard for me because I loved Death Becomes Her, the musical for those who've listened to the podcast, I gush about it.
• 20:37
  I'm trying to convince RJ to go back to it when we go to New York, still pending, just wait.
• 20:42
  ah But they are, they are like still copies of the movie, but that one takes some liberties where I feel like this one, they specifically wanted
• 20:54
  The person who's playing Doc Brown, wanted to play Doc Brown.
• 20:57
  They wanted Lucas, plays Marty McFly, to play Michael J.
• 21:01
  Fox, which is just like, again, I totally understand that.
• 21:05
  But also, I think that's where I was also getting stuck in, because it almost felt like a...
• 21:10
  Like a drag performance.
• 21:12
  Does that make sense?
• 21:13
  Like you're pretending exactly to be somebody else because you want the instant recognizable thing, but it's missing the moment.
• 21:20
  Yeah, it's impersonation.
• 21:22
  It's like think MJ the musical think more about say Tina Turner, right?
• 21:28
  Think think any show that basically just wants to have an impersonator Um And call it that the difference obviously being that this is a full movie and as a plot and that isn't just
• 21:43
  like a jukebox musical um, so yeah at the end of the day story and character wise I feel like
• 21:50
  there's a little bit of an identity crisis as a musical which I'll just say that.
• 21:58
  Which is interesting because when I spoke to Alyssa, who is the understudy for Lorraine, she was talking about how like Emma Thompson is kind of like the, want, for lack of better
• 22:08
  term, like the Bible for how she approaches that character.
• 22:12
  And I was like, that is really, that's cool that like you want to aspire to that.
• 22:15
  But also I want to see Alyssa's take on who Lorraine is.
• 22:19
  You know I mean?
• 22:20
  Like I want to see who does Alyssa, what does she highlight about Lorraine?
• 22:25
  What does Lucas find about Marty?
• 22:28
  ah What does David Joseph, sorry, David Joseph Berg, what does he find?
• 22:34
  Well, who is Doc to him?
• 22:36
  I think that sometimes when you get to have those pieces, it's more intriguing for somebody because you're entering into a new way of seeing the show through somebody else's
• 22:45
  eyes.
• 22:45
  And this is clearly like we're seeing it through whoever made the story.
• 22:49
  And it's funny that the story is still held by Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis.
• 22:53
  You know, the music is still done by um
• 22:58
  who's the guy that does them all?
• 22:59
  alan silvestri.
• 23:00
  You know, like, there's still these people who do all these things that were involved in the show.
• 23:03
  And I felt like they're just like, and copy and paste and copy and paste.
• 23:06
  And there's the show.
• 23:08
  Don't mess with it.
• 23:09
  But there's no originality to that.
• 23:11
  Yeah, like the don't fix what isn't broken is kind of the approach I feel like they took, which of course, when you have something that works, you are hesitant to change it, but
• 23:24
  then they literally, you're already changing it by adding music and dance.
• 23:31
  So you can't just take the same character lines and not fudge them a little bit.
• 23:41
  but then insert a song and then go back to being the character that you were before the song.
• 23:48
  Correct.
• 23:49
  And it's interesting though, when we talk about carbon copies, because there were some things of the show that were changed, specifically about the story and the characters I
• 23:55
  think is important.
• 23:57
  spoiler everybody, if you haven't seen the film from 40 years ago, Doc Brown dies in the beginning by gunshots because of stealing the plutonium and stuff like that.
• 24:09
  And they kill him and he's shot with a gun.
• 24:11
  um
• 24:13
  And they changed that to plutonium poisoning for this one, which I think is interesting in that fact of when you look at the character of Doc Brown, and this happens with a few of
• 24:20
  them.
• 24:21
  Doc Brown in the original was like a absent-minded brilliant professor, but also somebody who had a morally gray area where he's just like, I'm going to do anything um to get what
• 24:31
  I want.
• 24:31
  I mean, he's part of the, what, the Heidelberg project.
• 24:33
  um And like, he does, he does some things that are just like questionable, but he's so brilliant.
• 24:42
  And then this one, did you feel like he was a little bit more of like a bumbling, like a bumbling intelligent professor?
• 24:49
  Like, I feel like that was the P he felt a little stupid.
• 24:51
  Yes.
• 24:53
  Yeah, I...
• 24:55
  There was a level of lack of respect.
• 24:59
  Like, I was never able to gain a level of respect for him that I felt like everyone in the room who had seen it already had.
• 25:07
  Um...
• 25:09
  I was like, oh, like, he's just the funny guy.
• 25:12
  Like, he is the, um, lefou of this production.
• 25:17
  Like, he just...
• 25:18
  He is the guy that's supposed to be cracking jokes and making being stupid and but all the while, you know, like, okay, but this guy is also the one who created this.
• 25:33
  so those two things also felt like they were fighting against each other.
• 25:38
  And to your point of the, of obviously the gunshots versus, um, plutonium poisoning that
• 25:48
  makes so much that entire opening makes so much more sense with him being shot.
• 25:55
  I'm sorry.
• 25:57
  But like the sense of urgency for him getting plutonium, like I was like,
• 26:04
  What?
• 26:04
  And granted, like, I don't even know what the frick, plutonium, if that's even a real thing or it's just a sci-fi, like, whatever.
• 26:13
  But I was like, it was so anticlimactic to be like, oh no, I have plutonium on me.
• 26:24
  And then he speeds away at 90 miles per hour.
• 26:26
  You know what I'm like?
• 26:28
  Whereas if you're shot and dead or dying, that makes sense to me.
• 26:34
  And then like the emotion of like, this friend is dying.
• 26:40
  I'm watching him die.
• 26:41
  You know, like it just, it needed a little bit more Disney prologue.
• 26:46
  The parents are dying and then the child is by themselves.
• 26:53
  that level of drama just for me, again, personal opinions, was not there.
• 27:02
  I was like, I've...
• 27:04
  I could have just like hopped in that car and like driven away at a normal speed.
• 27:10
  Um, so I don't know.
• 27:13
  It was, that makes so much more sense now though.
• 27:16
  Like, because I'm like, why?
• 27:20
  What?
• 27:20
  Why?
• 27:21
  And when you think about the film, so Marty's continuing to be shot at, that's why he gets in the car and he speeds off because he's still being shot at by these people.
• 27:28
  They, it's hinted that it's like the mafia or something like that.
• 27:31
  Like there's somebody high profile that doc has screwed over.
• 27:35
  And so he's speeding off and that's why he accidentally hits 88 miles an hour.
• 27:38
  Cause he's trying to get away.
• 27:39
  This one, I was like, you're speeding to the hospital, but he's a not in the car.
• 27:43
  You're like, like there's like, there's, there was pieces missing to this.
• 27:47
  Yes, yes.
• 27:49
  Let me just tell you, when he jumped in that car and left him there, I was like, what, are you gonna go pick up the doctor and come back?
• 27:58
  Like, what do you mean?
• 28:00
  What do you mean?
• 28:02
  Yeah, wow.
• 28:05
  What a trip.
• 28:06
  they, one of the other changes that they really made, there's a few things I just want to note here real quick.
• 28:10
  One of the other changes that they made is that the voice recognition thing to the car, which is not in the film, that piece does not exist.
• 28:16
  The car doesn't even talk.
• 28:18
  So I was just like, I don't know what that did because it didn't add any plot points to it other than the fact he couldn't start it, but he couldn't start it because he didn't have
• 28:26
  the plutonium.
• 28:27
  that, what's this piece going on?
• 28:29
  And if we're making these silly changes, I'm gonna get on my soapbox just for a moment.
• 28:34
  Why could we make the changes like, we don't want gun violence.
• 28:36
  I get it.
• 28:37
  You changed it.
• 28:38
  Then why do we still have the dad being a peeping Tom, the mother having Marty grab her chest at places, trying to like, there's like some sexual assaulty bits to this.
• 28:50
  think it like, she doesn't know that's her son.
• 28:52
  You could still have that storyline in there.
• 28:53
  But I was like, if you've made these other changes, why not make the changes to really update this story a little bit?
• 29:01
  Like why, like, it feels like.
• 29:02
  There was like one point we made it, we're done.
• 29:04
  And that to me made no sense either.
• 29:06
  Yeah, 100%.
• 29:06
  There were just some, some writing pieces that full scale, even as someone who didn't know that they were changes that were made, like they didn't make sense.
• 29:19
  Like they just didn't make, you're trying to fit a square into a round hole and it wasn't working.
• 29:29
  And I get that not everything can make it transition onto stage, but I feel like the things that they could have, they could have done half the things from the movie and kept
• 29:37
  it the same and not have made that many changes.
• 29:41
  Like, again, I, this is where I'm really torn because I saw it.
• 29:44
  It's like, it's like seeing the Temu version of the film you grew up on and you're just a little bit disappointed.
• 29:50
  You're just like, that you were, you were almost there.
• 29:53
  Like you almost had that stitching perfectly and you still didn't get it.
• 29:57
  And yet I know that there were pieces that worked.
• 30:00
  Obviously we went with some folks who were fans and fans of the movie, now fans of the musical, uh because it did stay true to a lot of the language and a lot of the line for
• 30:13
  line, like similar comedy, you know, the jokes that they loved because it is exactly what they wanted.
• 30:23
  There was someone sitting behind us.
• 30:26
  during those main quote moments and she was saying them before they came out of the actor's mouth every single time.
• 30:33
  And it was word for word.
• 30:35
  So I understand that there's pieces of this.
• 30:40
  The pieces that they kept in were pieces that people really wanted to see, which is good because of course you wanna see kind of what you came for.
• 30:50
  which I think there were some pieces of that for me too, because I even told you as we're sitting there waiting for the show to begin, that one of my favorite lines is like, make
• 30:56
  like a tree and get out of here.
• 30:58
  And it's just so silly.
• 31:01
  And like those iconic lines, it's still got a chuckle out of me.
• 31:04
  It still hit those notes because this is, this, this story unfortunately was pure nostalgia entrapment.
• 31:12
  You know I mean?
• 31:12
  Like they were trying to hit the nostalgia and they did.
• 31:14
  For that aspect, the story hit all the notes that needed to hit.
• 31:17
  We got to the end, we had the story.
• 31:20
  We got to see all the cool things that makes Back to the Future cool, some of which we'll talk in part two, but like, I think that that is like, it did the job it was supposed to
• 31:29
  do.
• 31:30
  I'm wondering if I didn't have enough nostalgia for the film.
• 31:32
  And like, maybe that's what it is.
• 31:33
  But shout out to Cartreze Tucker for Goldie Wilson.
• 31:41
  Best part of the show by far.
• 31:44
  Nailed the music, the songs, the part, which is there.
• 31:49
  The bit is the mayor part too.
• 31:50
  That is a part from the original film.
• 31:52
  Went off like comedy gold.
• 31:54
  Give that man a star because that was incredible.
• 31:58
  Yeah, and we'll, as you mentioned, dive into the music next week, but even the acting portion of that was so clearly the favorite outside of the lead, the two leads.
• 32:13
  Um, because the, yeah, the comedy, the clear comedy, not the like, I didn't need to know the plot or the movie to know that, that line.
• 32:27
  or that subplot.
• 32:28
  So I appreciated that from the piece of like, okay, I'm following this character and I feel like they actually have a complete storyline that I am understanding.
• 32:39
  Correct.
• 32:40
  Correct.
• 32:42
  And so with that, we are running out of time, but stay tuned for part two of our Back to the Future discussion, where we will cover the music and stagecraft of this touring
• 32:49
  production.
• 32:50
  Thank you again for joining us here in our box seats.
• 32:52
  Till next curtain call.